Zitate

“People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.”

“How do these geese know when to fly to the sun? Who tells them the seasons? How do we, humans, know when it is time to move on? As with the migrant birds, so surely with us, there is a voice within, if only we would listen to it, that tells us so certainly when to go forth into the unknown.”

— The Wheel of Life, 1997

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”

— Death: The Final Stage of Growth, 1975

“Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms, you would never see the true beauty of their carvings.”

“I believe that we are solely responsible for our choices, and we have to accept the consequences of every deed, word, and thought throughout our lifetime.”

“We often tend to ignore how much of a child is still in all of us.”

“We need to teach the next generation of children from day one that they are responsible for their lives. Mankind’s greatest gift, also its greatest curse, is that we have free choice. We can make our choices built from love or from fear.”

“It is very important that you only do what you love to do. You may be poor, you may go hungry, you may lose your car, you may have to move into a shabby place to live, but you will totally live. And at the end of your days you will bless your life because you have done what you came here to do. Otherwise, you will live your life as a prostitute, you will do things only for a reason, to please other people, and you will never have lived. And you will not have a pleasant death.”

— The Wheel of Life, 1997

“It’s only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth – and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up – that we will begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had.”

“We bring a deeper commitment to our happiness when we fully understand that our time left is limited and we really need to make it count.”

— Life Lessons, 2000

“Live, so you do not have to look back and say: ‘God, how I have wasted my life.’”

— Death: The Final Stage of Growth, 1975

“We do not want to come to the end of our lives and say, ‘I’ve made a good living but I never really lived.’”

“The opinion which other people have of you is their problem, not yours.”

— On Life After Death, 1991

“The truth does not need to be defended.”

“Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences; all events are blessings given to us to learn from. There is no need to go to India or anywhere else to find peace. You will find that deep place of silence right in your room, your garden or even your bathtub.”

— Quoted in Yoga Journal, 1976

“As far as service goes, it can take the form of a million things. To do service, you don’t have to be a doctor working in the slums for free, or become a social worker. Your position in life and what you do doesn’t matter as much as how you do what you do.”

— Quoted in Teachers of Wisdom, 2010

“All true benefits are mutual.”

“We make progress in society only if we stop cursing and complaining about its shortcomings and have the courage to do something about them.”

— Living with Death and Dying, 1981

“I didn’t fully realize it at the time, but the goal of my life was profoundly molded by this experience – to help produce, in the next generation, more Mother Teresas and less Hitlers.”

“I’m not OK, you’re not OK, but that’s OK.”

“Watching a peaceful death of a human being reminds us of a falling star; one of a million lights in a vast sky that flares up for a brief moment only to disappear into the endless night forever.”

— On Death and Dying, 1969

“It is not the end of the physical body that should worry us. Rather, our concern must be to live while we’re alive – to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a facade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are.”

— Death: The Final Stage of Growth, 1975

“Dying is an integral part of life, as natural and predictable as being born. But whereas birth is cause for celebration, death has become a dreaded and unspeakable issue to be avoided by every means possible in our modern society. We may be able to delay it, but we cannot escape it.”

— Death: The Final Stage of Growth, 1975

“Dying is something we human beings do continuously, not just at the end of our physical lives on this earth.”

— Death: The Final Stage of Growth, 1975

“It is difficult to accept death in this society because it is unfamiliar. In spite of the fact that it happens all the time, we never see it.”

— Death: The Final Stage of Growth, 1975

“For those who seek to understand it, death is a highly creative force. The highest spiritual values of life can originate from the thought and study of death.”

— Death: The Final Stage of Growth, 1975

“Those who have been immersed in the tragedy of massive death during wartime, and who have faced it squarely, never allowing their senses and feelings to become numbed and indifferent, have emerged from their experiences with growth and humanness greater than that achieved through almost any other means.”

— Death: The Final Stage of Growth, 1975

“Death is simply a shedding of the physical body like the butterfly shedding its cocoon. It is no different from taking off a suit of clothes one no longer needs. It is a transition to a higher state of consciousness where you continue to perceive, to understand, to laugh, and to be able to grow.”

— Life Lessons, 2000

“Dying is nothing to fear. It can be the most wonderful experience of your life. It all depends on how you have lived.”

“I’ve told my children that when I die, to release balloons in the sky to celebrate that I graduated. For me, death is a graduation.”

“When we have passed the tests we are sent to Earth to learn, we are allowed to graduate. We are allowed to shed our body, which imprisons our souls.”

— The Wheel of Life, 1997

“And after your death, when most of you for the first time realize what life here is all about, you will begin to see that your life here is almost nothing but the sum total of every choice you have made during every moment of your life. Your thoughts, which you are responsible for, are as real as your deeds. You will begin to realize that every word and every deed affects your life and has also touched thousands of lives.”

“Those who learned to know death, rather than to fear and fight it, become our teachers about life.”

— On Children and Death, 1985

“We run after values that, at death, become zero. At the end of your life, nobody asks you how many degrees you have, or how many mansions you built, or how many Rolls Royces you could afford. That’s what dying patients teach you.”

“I hope that I am making it clear that patients do not necessarily follow a classical pattern from the stage of denial to the stage of anger, to bargaining, to depression and acceptance. Most of my patients have exhibited two or three stages simultaneously and these do not always occur in the same order.”

— Questions and Answers on Death and Dying, 1974

“Kenneth, I could tell them about thirteen stages — but who would remember?”

— To her son, Ken Ross

„Die fünf Phasen – Verleugnung, Wut, Verhandeln, Depression und Akzeptanz – sind Teil des Rahmens, der uns dabei hilft, mit dem Verlust eines geliebten Menschen oder mehrerer geliebter Menschen umzugehen. Sie sind Hilfsmittel, die uns dabei unterstützen, unsere Gefühle einzuordnen und zu erkennen. Aber sie sind keine Stationen auf einer linearen Zeitachse der Trauer.“

— On Grief and Grieving, with David Kessler, 2005

“They were never meant to help tuck messy emotions into neat packages.”

— On the stages, On Grief and Grieving, with David Kessler, 2005

“Denial helps us to pace our feelings of grief. There is a grace in denial. It is nature’s way of letting in only as much as we can handle.”

— On Grief and Grieving, with David Kessler, 2005

“The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same nor would you want to.”

— On Grief and Grieving, with David Kessler, 2005

“Any natural, normal human being, when faced with any kind of loss, will go from shock all the way through acceptance.”

“Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion of death.”

— On Death and Dying, 1969

“The one thing that usually persists through all these stages is hope.”

— On Death and Dying, 1969

“The ultimate lesson all of us have to learn is unconditional love, which includes not only others but ourselves as well.”

— The Wheel of Life, 1997

“I think modern medicine has become like a prophet offering a life free of pain. It is nonsense. The only thing I know that truly heals people is unconditional love.”

“Throughout life, we get clues that remind us of the direction we are supposed to be headed. If you stay focused, then you learn your lessons.”

— The Wheel of Life, 1997

“When you learn your lessons, the pain goes away.”

— The Wheel of Life, 1997

“There is no joy without hardship. If not for death, would we appreciate life? If not for hate, would we know the ultimate goal is love? At these moments you can either hold on to negativity and look for blame, or you can choose to heal and keep on loving.”

— The Wheel of Life, 1997

“I have learned there is no joy without hardship. There is no pleasure without pain. Would we know the comfort of peace without the distress of war?”

— The Wheel of Life, 1997

“You have to temper the iron. Every hardship is an opportunity that you are given, an opportunity to grow. To grow is the sole purpose of existence on this planet Earth. You will not grow if you sit in a beautiful flower garden, but you will grow if you are sick, if you are in pain, if you experience losses, and if you do not put your head in the sand, but take the pain as a gift to you with a very, very specific purpose.”

— Death Is of Vital Importance, 1995

“When we face the worst that can happen in any situation, we grow. When circumstances are at their worst, we can find our best.”

“Consciously or not, we are all on a quest for answers, trying to learn the lessons of life. We grapple with fear and guilt. We search for meaning, love, and power. We try to understand fear, loss, and time. We seek to discover who we are and how we can become truly happy.”

— Life Lessons, 2000

“Learning lessons is a little like reaching maturity. You’re not suddenly more happy, wealthy, or powerful, but you understand the world around you better, and you’re at peace with yourself. Learning life’s lessons is not about making your life perfect, but about seeing life as it was meant to be.”

— Life Lessons, 2000

“Nobody was honest with them, so I made it my mission to listen.”

“Those who have the strength and the love to sit with a dying patient in the silence that goes beyond words will know that this moment is neither frightening nor painful, but a peaceful cessation of the functioning of the body.”

— On Death and Dying, 1969

“I say to people who care for people who are dying, if you really love that person and want to help them, be with them when their end comes close. Sit with them – you don’t even have to talk. You don’t have to do anything but really be there with them.”

“If we could teach our students the value of science and technology simultaneously with the art and science of inter-human relationships, of human and total patient care, we would have real progress.”

— On Death and Dying, 1969

“There is not much sense in suffering, since drugs can be given for pain, itching, and other discomforts. The belief has long died that suffering here on earth will be rewarded in heaven. Suffering has lost its meaning.”

— On Death and Dying, 1969

“There is a time in a patient’s life when the pain ceases to be, when the mind slips off into a dreamless state, when the need for food becomes minimal and the awareness of the environment all but disappears into darkness. This is the time when the relatives walk up and down the hospital hallways, tormented by the waiting, not knowing if they should leave to attend the living or stay to be around for the moment of death. This is the time when it is too late for words, and yet the time when the relatives cry the loudest for help – with or without words.”

— On Death and Dying, 1969

“When I came to this country in 1958, to be a dying patient in a medical hospital was a nightmare. You were put in the last room, furthest away from the nurses’ station. You were full of pain, but they wouldn’t give you morphine. Nobody told you that you were full of cancer and that it was understandable that you had pain and needed medication.”

“I can look forward to my weekly treatments which allow me to walk in water at least, if not on water…haha…”

— Newsletter, Spring 2000

“I have just completed work on my 20th book, which will come out next year. It is entitled, ‘Life Lessons’ and will be first book about life, NOT Death!”

— Newsletter, Spring 2000

“My friend’s brother died from ALS, a disease far worse than I have. If I compare myself with patients like that I consider myself very lucky & healthy.”

— Newsletter, Winter 2000/2001

“I also have a website now even though I still hate computers!”

— Newsletter, Winter 2000/2001

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